The BlackBerry Pearl 3G has landed, complete with an unusual and old school 0-9 keyboard. That might dissuade existing Pearl owners from an upgrade, but if you’re eyeing your friends nattering away on BlackBerry Messenger with envy, it might just be the perfect handset to help you join in the banter. We fired up BBM to find out, so read on for the verdict in this part of our BlackBerry Pearl 3G review.
BlackBerry Pearl 3G: Everything you need to know. Click here!
Read the rest of our BlackBerry Pearl 3G review:
BlackBerry Pearl 3G review
BlackBerry Pearl 3G review: Typing tested
BlackBerry Pearl 3G review: Build and media skills
BlackBerry Pearl 3G review: What’s new
BlackBerry Pearl 3G review: Live Q&A!
If you’ve used a BlackBerry before, you’ll know how BlackBerry Messenger works, and there’s little difference on the BlackBerry Pearl 3G: instant and free chat, pushed straight to your friends and tightly integrated into your email inbox, with no discernible impact on battery life. The screen ratio has changed, but the BlackBerry Messenger interface layout is still exactly the same, with drop down menus for chats, contacts and groups.
If you’re switching from another ‘Berry to the BlackBerry Pearl 3G, setting up an existing tied email account will download all your contacts to the phone, so you don’t have to faff around asking your friends for their pin numbers over again. And if you’re moving from a different brand of phone altogether, you don’t have to either: you can generate QR codes (shown in our gallery above) that other BlackBerry owners can quickly scan using their phone’s camera to add you to their contacts list. Whatever you’ve upgraded from, you’ll be up and running quickly.
As we touch on elsewhere in our BlackBerry Pearl 3G review though, the chances are, if you already own a BlackBerry, you may not actually want to switch back from a 20 button or full QWERTY keyboard. In our typing tests, we found the BlackBerry Pearl 3G just couldn’t match other models when it came to tapping out properly formatted, punctuated emails for work. However, while using BlackBerry Messenger it’s obvious that wasn’t BlackBerry’s intended use for the Pearl 3G.
Typing problems melt away in the informal BlackBerry Messenger setting: for short bursts of lower case chat, with typos allowed, the BlackBerry Pearl 3G is ideal. Combine that with its ridiculously slim size, and it’s very nearly the perfect BlackBerry Messenger phone.
Sure, it’s not one for high flying suits, but for teens who rate chat above Microsoft Exchange e-mail support, and regularly burn through their monthly text allowances, it’s a sure-fire winner.
Now we’ve established who the Pearl 3G is aimed at, there is still a catch though – the price. The first tariffs have appeared for pre-order online, with Orange asking for £20 per month over two years for 100 minutes and unlimited data – and £30 for a more realistic 500 minutes. It’s not a surprise, considering the Bold 9700 has matching specs under the bonnet, and goes for a similar sum. It is a lot to ask if all you want is a fun phone that’ll run BlackBerry Messenger though: in fact, for this purpose, the BlackBerry Pearl 3G is almost too powerful.
It’s not often we ask for a gadget with downgraded specs, but in this case we’d love to have seen a BlackBerry Pearl 3G model with a lower price and maybe some less impressive innards to keep the cost down, but as it stands, it’s still the go to model if you want to chat with your friends rather than pose in the boardroom.
Read the rest of our BlackBerry Pearl 3G review:
BlackBerry Pearl 3G review
BlackBerry Pearl 3G review: Typing tested
BlackBerry Pearl 3G review: Build and media skills
BlackBerry Pearl 3G review: What’s new
BlackBerry Pearl 3G review: Live Q&A!
